David Salle has done us a fine favor. The accomplished postmodern painter, author and curator, who hails from Norman, has delivered an absolute knockout of super fresh painting at Oklahoma Contemporary. In 32 curated works, Salle taps deep into his network of world-class artist peers, gallerists an d collectors to manifest a lusty vision for the expressive personalities of paint. There is a marvelous jumping-off point into Salle’s super-saturated pigment party Clever, Quick, Magnetic: The Art of Witty Banter. A modest little painting by Verne Dawson depicts a familiar sight on the prairie, a towering thunderhead against a blue sky. In the lower foreground, however, a thick black horizontal strip of paint hovers like a pancake above the tree line. Entitled “U.F.O.” Dawson’s adorable pancake of paint points to the uncanny. Julian Schnabel, Self Portrait (End of the Day in the Engadin Valley), 2025. Oil, plates, and bondo on aluminum. 72 × 60 in. © Julian Schnabel Studio. Courtesy Private Collection. Photo: Tom Powell. In the adjacent black and white work, the pancake form repeats as a balance beam. A girl in a white dress stands precariously poised at its edge with a hump of headland and distant ocean in the background. Bennett Miller’s dream-like image, notably A.l. generated, reads like a fuzzy old snapshot. We all recognize that anxious moment at the end of the diving board or the top of the roller coaster. Ready to dive? That is what Salle has achieved in this exhibition: He’s given us a place to jump and a luscious foam pit of a landing spot. It’s fascinating how intergenerational the witty banter pings around the gallery. Clever, Quick, Magnetic exhibits at least four generations of artists, all in lively contemporary conversation. Huge heavyweight abstractions like “Yumeji’s Theme” feature confident painterly gestures with hints of figuration in an intriguing pictorial space. Tamo Jugeli’s 2026 work is a superb example of the red hot “ultra-contemporary” sales category, generally artists under 40, whose primary market works are in high demand. Typically, one would only encounter such fresh, grand material at art fairs or mega galleries. Not to be outdone, the venerable American master Alex Katz—still painting at age 99 and best known for his sleek female figures and flat fields of color—goes big in abstract orange and white with his 2024 painting, “Road 25.” Rose Wylie, a 90-something British painter, injects a healthy dose of saucy humor through her naïve painting style in “Illuminated Manuscript, Adam and Eve.” Significantly, it’s one of several paintings throughout the exhibition that prominently feature the use of bright yellow. In Wylie’s case, it marks the biblical serpent. Yellows provide key background support for the sturdy sculptural forms in Albert Oehlen’s “Omega Man 1” or the cartoonish mudras of Charlene von Heyl’s “Don’t Think it Hasn’t Been Lovely Because It Hasn’t Been (Bugs Bunny).” The full-length nude in Chantal Joffe’s “Painter in Bed” lies stiffly across a yellow drapery—somewhat paralyzed, vulnerable, suspicious. A sign of our post-pandemic times, no doubt. Then, shining like a sun, Sterling Ruby’s “TURBINE. Solar Cult.” exudes industrial-strength materiality with its sewn-on cardboard cladding. Ruby’s pure powdery pigment trails of green, black, orange-red, pink and aquamarine seem to vibrate off the yellow ground like magnetic filaments. Salle has a refined instinct for such compelling articulations of paint. “Cracks in legal protection,” for example, is a 2026 drone painting by Walter Price with range of chilling blue-black paint surfaces and ghostly silhouettes rendered with a tension of surveillance and invisibility. This must be post-postmodern painting, dematerializing before Big Brother Tech’s omniscient eye. After all humanity has been through the last several years, there is surprisingly little gloom to dwell on with so much fabulous paint to revel in. Amy Sillman’s “She/They” and Spencer Sweeney’s “Nocturnal Congress” communicate bodily angst in their figures, as does Carroll Dunham in his violent rassling match, “Big Men (2).” There are some big feelings present but some clever punch lines too. Josh Smith sure gave the Grim Reaper a proper makeover. David Salle appropriately includes his own work in the conversation. “New Pastoral with Red Tights” is a vibrant cinematic composition with a touch of Gauguin-in-Tahiti vibe. A mysteriously delicate female hand seemingly breaks through the picture plane flanked by taut brown torsos, a sunburst, a carved wood paddling figure and disembodied garments. Salle’s all-over, mytho-poetic action can seize up the brain and force creative reconciliation.Naturally, Salle’s generational peers make seminal contributions to Clever, Quick, Magnetic. Not the least of whom are art stars like Stanley Whitney, Julian Schnabel and the underrated sculptor Arlene Shechet. She holds the distinction of having the only stand-alone sculpture in the exhibition: Her powder-encrusted biomorph appears to be visiting from far, far away and has apertures to communicate. One happens to be oozing a tongue of multicolored paint, thus speaking Salle’s language. We can all learn by immersing ourselves in the irrepressible personalities of paint, on exhibit at Oklahoma Contemporary until Jan. 11, 2027. The post I Am Curious (Yellow) appeared first on Oklahoma Gazette. ...read more read less